“House of the Dead” is a movie that benefits from its DVD release
because, to be blunt, the supplemental materials are better done and
more entertaining than the actual feature.

“House” is based on a Sega “first person shooter” video arcade game, in
which the player is responsible for blowing away masses of rotting
zombies. The game, in turn, obviously owes a creative debt to George
Romero’s “Living Dead” horror films (which get their due mention in
“House,” to say nothing of its supplements). Dave Parker and executive
producer Mark Altman, working from a story by Altman and Dan Bates,
have written a screenplay that actually shows a fair amount of
imagination in creating a back story explaining the gruesome situation.

A bunch of college students head to a weekend-long rave on an island
off the coast of Seattle. Our main characters, latecomers who missed
the original boat, can’t figure out where the rest of the partygoers
have gone. It takes our vacationing scholars a long time to begin to
suspect that there might be something to the warnings about “Isla los
Muertos” tossed their way by the fishing boat captain (Jurgen Prochnow)
and his first mate (Clint Howard), who reluctantly ferried them to the
island.

There’s nothing wrong with this set-up, per se, nor is there anything
intrinsically wrong with the idea of adapting a videogame into a film,
albeit the result is unlikely to be “Lord of the Rings” (reverse
engineering notwithstanding – there are a number of reportedly very
good videogames based on the “Rings” films). “Resident Evil” is an
excellent example (in fact, one that is invoked on at least one of the
audio commentaries here) of a game-based horror movie that retains the
most interesting elements of its origins while succeeding on its own
terms as scary/kinetic zombie splatter.Unfortunately,
“House of the Dead” seldom manages to generate real scares. The reason
for this is addressed in executive producer/co-writer Mark Altman’s
highly entertaining and informative commentary track: director Uwe Boll
decided that the best way to honor “House’s” source material was by
skipping the horror film aspect and trying to make it resemble a
first-person shooter game. While probably anything can be made to work
if it’s done right, this concept seems rather perilous from the start.
Anybody who really wants a first-person shooter experience is going to
be extremely frustrated by an hour and 45 minutes of material without
the ability to pull the trigger, and viewers who just want the
low-budget horror film experience will likely be highly annoyed by the
movie’s indifference to the notion of trying to produce actual fear.

Boll does a couple of odd, jarring things, like using “Matrix”-style
“bullet time” shots in the action that don’t seem to fit with
characters or events – the visuals are there for their own sake.
Likewise, he frequently integrates clips of the actual videogame into
the live action. This provides some immediate straight-ahead
comparisons between the live sequences and their arcade counterparts,
but it also tends to destroy any sense of flow.

In 5.1, the throbbing rave music that plays over beta graphics at the
start sounds solid, and we hear nice, discrete ocean waves in the
rears. Chapter 3 provides a startling voice isolated in the right rear.
The chapter also features an impressively jarring door slam, although
the dialogue doesn’t always appear to be in perfect sync. Gunshots are
decent but not as jolting as they might be.

On the upside, the effects makeup is good for the budget and Parker and
Altman have crafted a nicely gothic history for the accursed island, as
well as giving us an actual Big Bad character to hate. Then there are
the extras, which really are worth the price of admission. Altman’s
commentary is huge fun, full of anecdotes and good humor, at one point
apologizing for giving away a plot point, then catching himself: “If I
just gave that away, why the hell are you listening to the commentary
before watching the movie?” Altman puts the best face on events while
still acknowledging some things that went wrong and is comfortable
filling in some fair-sized plot holes (one of which totally changes the
nature of the finale). Another commentary track from director Boll,
producer Shawn Williamson, associate producer/post-production
supervisor Jonathan Shore and actor Will Sanderson is filled with
amiable teasing and interesting details about the production. For some
reason, subtitles for the dialogue came up automatically on the
multi-person commentary, but not on Altman’s.

The featurettes are great. There’s a charming, loony “Zombie Boot Camp”
segment, in which the actors are shown preparing for their combat
sequences by having paintball battles. There’s also a making-of
featurette that spends so much time with Romero (the acknowledged king
of the zombie genre) and his makeup effects chieftain Tom Savini that
there winds up being more focus on “Night of the Living Dead” and its
sequels than on “House of the Dead,” despite Romero’s lack of direct
involvement with the new project. The disc also contains several
deleted scenes (one of which starts out mute but acquires an audio
track about a third of the way through) and three storyboard comparison
sequences.“House
of the Dead” is bare-basics zombie fare – good makeup, almost no
emotion. However, the disc is worth owning for aspiring filmmakers, who
will learn something from the supplemental materials, for fans of
Romero and Savini and for those who just enjoy the genre no matter what.